Social Media Sites Help Families Find Loved Ones Thousands Of Miles Away

From the get-go, Google, Twitter and other companies jumped in to help however they could after last week’s earthquake in Japan.

As we first showed you on Friday, Google launched its online “Person Finder” for people seeking information about a missing person.

Microsoft is offering free technical support and temporary software licenses to companies affected by the earthquake.

Twitter is trying to help organize the flood of information flowing through its system. It is suggesting people use certain tags for general earthquake information, requests for rescue and other related topics.

Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have links on their home pages encouraging people to donate to the relief efforts.

But no one can ignore the video we’ve all seen.

Youtube has seen 16,000 clips of the earthquake uploaded to their website. It?s something the head of of product management talked about with Bloomberg News.

?They’re coming from an incredibly diverse range,? said Hunter Walk. ?From official agencies – government and news agencies – to everyday citizens – citizen journalists. That has not only helped bring the situation home to the people in the Asia Pacific region , but to people worldwide.”

It used to take a long time to get a list of the missing. The internet is now helping.

Monday, we found out 5 people from California are among the missing after the quake.

Quaid Bartolomei, 22, of Walnut Creek, east of San Francisco; Steven Buck, 50, of Santa Ana; Randy Collins, 8, of Orange County and David Gasdaska, 27, of San Diego were all listed.

For a full list of Americans missing in the earthquake aftermath, click here.